Thursday, April 22, 2010

Tebow Draft Day: Renewed NFL Fandom

Well, everyone knew this was coming: Without a real NFL allegiance -- I think we can all agree the Jaguars thing, um, didn't really work out -- I was always going to adopt the team that drafted Tebow. And, on Tebow Draft Day, here is the post that lays it all out:

Let's start with a confession: I enjoy the NFL -- though not nearly as much as college football -- but I don't have a particular NFL team I root for. I mean: I have my fantasy team. But that isn't the same thing.

This is strange. Everyone should have a favorite NFL team -- it's the most popular sport in the country. It just feels... wrong. I envy the folks with a strong NFL allegiance -- feels like almost everyone has one.

I used to have a team...

The onset of puberty and fan identity happen at roughly the same time. Immersion into your favorite team – into sports more generally – helps to offset the awkwardness of a cracking voice or unsettling sight of hair in weird places; hormones dictate that girls get more interesting – but still socially awkward, you throw yourself into love of your team.

For me, that was the unstoppable 1985 Bears. Growing up in a die-hard Redskins town, I was a Bears fan. On its surface, that was because my dad was a Bears fan – there was an early and powerful father-son connection to be made there. But looking back, there was a deeper interest for me: Displaced fandom made me unique, gave me an identity as a fan. I could be a Skins fan like the rest of ‘em… or the only Bears fan in the school.

At this age, I was an outlier: The more typical path of the emotionally and physically awkward 13-year-old fan is to find a new community – commonality – with other fans around them. Fan identity is incubated in a safe environment – not so for me.

And so I was a Bears fan. I suffered through the Redskins' success (often at the Bears' expense) and reveled in the 1985 domination. When it came time to go to college, I was headed to Northwestern, just outside of Chicago. To be able to root for my favorite football team up close seemed like the best kind of bonus.

As it happened, it didn't quite turn out like I expected. I actually became less of a Bears fan once I got to Chicago -- in part in my immersion into a town of crazy Bears fans. It was like I lost the "unique" part of my fandom that was such a big component of my fan identity.

From there, things atrophied further. In 1997, I actually went to go work for the NFL, and if it wasn't seriously eroded by then, upon the conclusion of my one season with the league, the dissolution of my NFL fandom was complete.

Very briefly, I found a new spark of interest -- the emergence of Kurt Warner, which I think is the most interesting story in NFL history. Once I started writing the Daily Quickie, I obviously was immersed in NFL news, but that didn't do anything for my individual NFL team fandom. I was still lost.

In 2006, I tried an odd experiment: Given the assignment from Deadspin to write the Jacksonville Jaguars season preview, I adopted the Jaguars as my own. They seemed an interesting fit: There aren't many of them out there, and the north Florida location seemed like a pretty good fit with my then-5-year-old Florida Gators fandom.

I tried. I really did. (I also recognize if "real" Jaguars fans were offended by my bandwagon-hopping.) But it just didn't take. I couldn't watch them every Sunday -- hell, even fans in Jacksonville can't watch them on TV every Sunday -- and I just didn't have a passion to keep up with them.

But around the same time -- fall of 2006 -- I recognized almost immediately that Tim Tebow was my favorite football player of all time. That only grew in 2007 -- as I'm sure it did for many people. It compounded in 2008, and -- obviously -- my interest in the subject intensified in 2009.

It was sometime after that first season with the Jaguars -- and first season with Tebow -- that I decided that, ultimately, I was going to end up rooting for whatever team Tim Tebow was drafted to.

If you thought it was odd that my fandom for Florida came when I met my wife -- who was a "real," born-and-raised Gators fan -- it might seem even more odd that I would pick an NFL team based on a specific player.

Maybe that's not the case. I know a lot of fans -- particularly ones I see on message boards -- who care about their college team but don't have a particularly strong NFL allegiance who root for their favorite college players on whatever NFL team they end up on.

Now, that's not the same as being a fan of that team -- whoever is on that team. It is actually the opposite: You are a fan of a team precisely because of who is on that team. This can cause complications.

For example: If Tebow is drafted by the Vikings, I will definitely root for the Vikings and want to watch the Vikings play -- as a function of being a Tebow fan. If things go awry and Tebow ends up on the Patriots in four years, I presume I would stop rooting for the Vikings and pick up rooting for the Pats.

This cannot possibly do anything but make Vikings fans cringe -- I'm not even sure they would want me. Then again, this is the fan base that went from loathing Brett Favre to cheering him in the span of a week; they hardly can claim a problem with someone else's bandwagon fandom.

And so in addition to the next phase of Tim Tebow's career beginning tonight, I look forward to the next phase of my own career as a sports fan -- I'm ready to pick up and root for the team that Tebow plays for, whether the fans of that team want me or not. I will buy the jersey. I will read the coverage. I will watch the games.

Does it matter that my interest is focused specifically on Tebow? I don't think a team's existing fan bases are in a position to be turning away new converts.

Obviously, fandom is not just fundamentally social but also intensely personal.

To that extent, the team's existing fans are hardly in a position to judge the level or intensity or focus of my fandom. (Although I'm sure there will be plenty of judging going on -- much of it not positive.)

But they should count me in.

My transformation -- or, I guess, evolution -- continues tonight. And I get the feeling that there are many folks out there who root for Tebow who will be joining me. He presents a cult of personality unlike any athlete in sports right now. I'm not sure any team's marketing department or existing fans understand that yet.

1 comment:

But what do you do when Tebow retires? Or if he just isn't good after a few years?

I became a sports fan in the mid-90s. The Indians were my favorite baseball team and Carlos Baerga was my favorite player. When the Tribe trade Carlos to the Mets, I rooted just as hard for the Mets as I did the Indians. But Carlos's career dropped off pretty quick, and it seemed silly to root for the Diamondbacks just because Carlos was a bench player for them.

If Tebow ends up not playing a down his first year somewhere, will you really be watching that team every Sunday?

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.